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SPRINGFIELD-Thursday marked just another day at the office in the Democratic-led Illinois House, which sunk to new depths in futility in trying to solve the state’s $97 billion pension crisis.

House Speaker Michael Madigan (D-Chicago) set aside part of the day for the House to take test votes on four separate pension-reform ideas – ending annual retiree cost-of-living increases entirely, withholding those increases until the state’s pension systems are 80-percent funded, boosting the retirement age to 67 and increasing employee pension contributions by another 5 percent per paycheck.

In order, here is how many votes each idea got: 2, 5, 1 and 3.

More than 60 of Madigan’s House Democrats voted against each plan, and Republicans didn’t vote at all, arguing the whole exercise was nothing more than a “charade” orchestrated by the speaker, who was the only “yes” vote on each measure. More…